Theo: “Guess what’s in my belly button!”
Alice: “…is this a trick question?”
Theo: “A train and a lollipop and another train!”
Alice: “That’s amazing, Bubba. I should sell you to the Circus.
Theo: “…Why?”
Alice: “Because of all the things you can fit in your belly button!”
Theo: “…I don’t want you to sell me to the Circus”
Alice: “Sorry, darling. I was just tricking”
Theo: “…Why are you tricking me, Mama?”
Alice: “I was just being silly, darling”
Theo: “Well, don’t.”
Wake Up and Smell the Acetone.
Theo: “Mama, I am 3. How old are you?”
Alice: “Yes; you are, and Mae-Mae is 2. How old do you think I am?”
Theo: “I don’t know…”
Alice: “Ever tactful, darling. Have a guess. Do you think I am old or young?”
Theo: “Let me check…”
(Results are in: I am ‘old-young’. Paring down my skin-care routine to moisturising, fretting and 1000 kisses a day seems to be paying dividends)
“Mae-Mae stomp the Bee’s?”
“Mae-Mae give Mama a bash?”
“Mae-Mae smash the window with this?”
“I’d like a box of beer, pwease.”
Mabel has egg shell stuck to her bottom. (You know how it is.)
Mabel: “I’ve got a poo egg!”
Theo: “I will help you!”
Mabel: “No! Don’t touch my bottom egg! Mama! Do it!”
Alice: “Certianly, darling. It’s the role I was born to play”.
Sometimes, all will grow very Quiet.
So quiet you notice it. This Quiet does not feel like the quiet you notice when you have the house to yourself for an hour. This Quiet makes you suspicious. The very thing you have spent your parenthood wishing for, you will grow to fear. For so rarely does this Quiet lead you to discover anything you do not have to steel yourself against. It will not lead you to find your children playing sweetly, like English storybook characters with unfortunately anatomical names; sharing and laughing and clean.
It will lead you to the back deck where you will find the roasting dish full with this mornings mop water; your children nude and taking turns washing each other with a filthy dishcloth while eating the eggs you had hard-bolied for their lunches. There will be eggshell in places you could not imagine, but will not surprise you. Because you are a parent, and you have seen it all.
Or atleast you will.
Before you have children you will believe all sorts of things about the kind of parent you will be.
Like, how you will never, ever let your kid watch television. Their days will be so filled with, like, wooden toys and The Guardian Weekly Junior and wholesome moments of togetherness; but then they’ll start to say ‘Gracias’ and Toucan with a Spanish inflection and you’ll be like, I love you, Dora. Thanks for babysitting my kids while I was on the internet.
Theo: “Mama, where is my poo?”
Alice: “…is this a trick question?”
Theo: “It’s in my bottom! I need to eat some more so the food will push the poo out. Can I have a chicken sandwich?”
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